Red Mountain APDR

I really don't have anything to rant and roar about tonight, so I am going to write about my job.

As I have stated already, I work for the Washington State Department of Transportation in Yakima, WA. I am in the Project Development office.

When not being sent to different WSDOT training classes, I have been working on an Access Point Decision Report (APDR). An APDR is written to request permission for a new interchange or an interchange modification project to the interstate system. The APDR is submitted to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

The APDR I am writing is for a new interchange on I-82. The approximate location can be seen in the below image.I guess I can rant a little about this project. The FHWA states that an existing or anticipated need must be established for an APDR to be approved. Northeast (up and right) of the proposed interchange is the City of West Richland and the driving force behind the interchange. A large part of their need is the fact that the city has zoned land for light industial and commercial use. This land is currently sage brush and irrigated fields; the city has no gurantee that the land will develop. They are operating on the "if you build it, they will come" scenario. Which is a probably tru, but it is not the way the FHWA apporves APDRs.

Or so their literature claims. After a meeting between WSDOT officials, City and County officials, and FHWA representative, I am informed that the FHWA rep. was convinced that a need exists.

Actually, I do see the need for some sort of solution in the area too. FHWA states that the adjacent interchanges must be considered in an APDR. Well, one of the two adjacent interchanges is a system interchange (interstate to interstate) so traffic can not exit to local roads. The other is will have a failing level of services (FHWA traffic capacity rating) in the future (according to model data/projections) performed by the county.

The questions are:

1. Will future development be realized within the 20 year design window?
2. Can the existing service (access to local roadways) interchange be fixed without building a new interchange?

Well, we have continues to prepare the APDR, except for the Operational (level of service) part. We have requested that the county rerun their model with WSDOT traffic counts. Once we have the new model results we will review them and, hopefully, deem the model acceptable.

I apologize if this isn't flowing very well. but I am not going to fix it.

Couple of additional thoughts:

1. If you haven't guessed it, my office hasn't done an APDR either ever or in so long that all connected to it have retired.
2. This project has more political backing than number backing.
   
3. After all of our negative thinking, we have discovered that the FHWA (or at least the local FHWA officials) does not follow the proverbial book.

Well, if you aren't confused or plagued by a headache, feel free to email me any questions. I will do my best to answer them and clarify any thing I phrased poorly.